Wanderung 4

Toyota Tundra Tows Trailer!

Or: Following Fall Foliage with Family Flophouse Firmly Affixed!

September - October 2003

October 3 - Baraboo Circus Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin

We had a heavy rain during the night that tapered off by morning into sporadic showers, so we decided on an inside activity for the day. Our choice was the Circus Museum in nearby Baraboo, Wisconsin, and we arrived shortly after they opened at 10. It was good that we got an early start as we ended up staying there until they closed at 4, taking only a short break for lunch at a nearby Taco Bell.

I started off reading about the lives of the five Ringling brothers in the main museum building, which was the epitome of an American rags-to-riches story. These capsule biographies were supplemented by a more impressionistic 30-minute film about their achievements. The brothers started out as the sons of a local harness maker who had trouble making ends meet and raise his nine children, but by sheer hard work and canny business sense they entered the circus business and built up the first-class Ringling Brothers circus. Ultimately they were so successful that they took over all the other major U.S. circuses and eventually arranged quasi-monopolistic non-competitive routes and schedules for the performances of the different circuses.

What I think was most impressive was how they transitioned from jack-of-all-trades to specializations as their circus holdings became really big business. They each settled into specialties like finance, advance publicity, music and shows, or day-to-day operations and that allowed them to run what became one of the largest U.S. businesses without any formal organizational training or support of any kind.

Their financial arrangements were also curious from a modern point of view. They shared the profits from the business by simply splitting it 5 ways into each of their savings accounts at the local Baraboo bank each week, But there was never any written contract of any kind and no evidence of any serious acrimony. On the surface this seems to be one of the most successful family-based enterprises I have ever read about, and I surely would like to know how they did it. I would guess that they established a cooperative working relationship as children in a hard-pressed family and carried this relationship throughout their adult lives, but even if that guess is correct it is still quite an achievement.

We caught a tour right after the movie, and our tour guide was a very knowledgeable fellow indeed. He related incidents and told stories that were really entertaining. On the whole I find a personal presentation is more entertaining than reading a summary altho the written version allows you stand and think about the implications somewhat more. But the big advantage to taking the tour was that our docent ran the pneumatically-operated circus organ for us, which was quite a listening experience. At the end, he also ran the carousel while we rode the horses, another great experience.

After lunch we returned to take some more pictures until the 4 p.m. closing time. The restoration center for circus wagons was interesting and we saw some absolutely gorgeous gilded circus wagons that had been restored in the last few years. Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “breathtakingly beautiful”, and I guarantee you that when you walk in and look closely at these huge, intricately-carved and gilded circus wagons you will at least have a Moment’s pause if not find yourself taking a deep breath. I definitely had a “gee whiz look at that!” sensation as we walked around them admiring all the handiwork. I found them much more impressive than the gilded screens and religious items I saw in Europe on Wanderung 2. To be fair I think this is partly due to the sheer size of these circus wagons—they were truly monstrous and some were just covered in gilt. We were told that just to gild one of them required tens of thousands of dollars, and I could easily believe it.

We also visited a kind of storage and display hall for restored circus wagons, railroad cars, and miscellaneous equipment that was just across from the restoration hall. Don’t miss that either! It’s quite a collection and again I had a “gee whiz” reaction to some of the just beautiful examples of the circus wagons. We particularly enjoyed the gilded vignette of Prince Charming putting a slipper on Cinderella’s foot and we laughed at one that had the theme of the little old woman who lived in a gilded shoe and had so many gilded children she didn’t know what to do! (Maybe sell them all and take the profits and run?)

But seriously there really were so many other stunning examples of the wagon-crafter’s art that we finally ran out of time while taking pictures of them all. I was down to 7 pictures so if I had not run out of time I would have certainly run out of pictures! Given the 4 o’clock witching hour, I reluctantly left off taking pictures of these marvelous devices and we wended our way back to camp. All in all, I would recommend the Circus World museum to folks who have interest in this kind of thing, but if you really want to experience the circus you might want to go in the summer when they are also putting on circus performances. Visiting in the off-season as we did allows a more relaxed look at the museum exhibits, but gives you no real circus experiences. Back at camp, I typed my daily journal and Monika crocheted while we listened to CDs for the evening.

Copyright 2004 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog Map Epilog

September 2003
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October 2003
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